Chapter 19 - Marked For Harvest

The tracks are a meandering mess, but it’s not long before I’m able to follow them to their source. They all lead back to a huge tree with a half-dug pit at its base that was only a few minutes from my cave.

I’m holding my big stick and shield as I approach, but I let both slowly fall when I see the shape lying motionless at the base of the tree. It looks like a rock smeared with blood at first. I move closer and realize this must be the thing I was following once I spot the horns on its head.

“Large cat made of rock,” Bugbug says helpfully as he zooms ahead, looking down at the poor thing.

I let out a heavy breath. He’s not too far off. It has the proportions of a panther, but twice as big in every way. Instead of fur, its body is covered in rocky plates that look random, but seem to interlock like perfectly fitting puzzle pieces. The horns are made of rock, too.

Something took huge bites out of it, leaving a red mess all over the snow. I spot more tracks by the body, but these are bigger. Not as big as the giant’s, but massive. They look like hooves and they’re wide enough that I could nearly sit inside one of them without touching either edge.

“Fuck,” I whisper. “How much terrifying shit is really out here?”

At the sound of my voice, a small round rock near the body twitches.

I take a step back, raising my stick and shield.

“Human fights his campfire,” Bugbug says. “Now he will fight small rock. Riveting.”

I stare at the rock, throat bobbing as I wait for it to move again. When it doesn’t, I slowly lower the point of my stick and poke it. As soon as I touch it, the rock lets out a high-pitched squeak, uncurls like an armadillo, and creeps back on four legs. It’s a bite-sized version of the dead creature. This must be the baby of the dead one.

And then it clicks.

The creature lurking outside my cave every night wasn’t stalking me. She was probably just worried because I’d set up camp so close to her den and her baby. A little jab of guilt runs through me. I’d been coming out here to kill this thing, and I probably wouldn’t have even realized I was orphaning this angry baby rock cat in the process.

“It’s okay, little guy,” I say, kneeling and setting down my stick and shield. I show it my palms, as if that’s going to mean anything. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Human doesn’t want to hurt it? Why?” Bugbug asks.

“Because it’s just a baby, you asshole,” I snap.

“Mmm. Yes. Baby is not much meat, Bugbug understands.”

“No, it’s just… I’ve always wanted a pet. Believe it or not, there weren’t exactly friendly creatures where I come from.”

“Creature looks like it wants to bite human’s face off. This is friendly?”

I tilt my head. Bugbug isn’t entirely wrong. “He’ll come around. He just lost his mom, so being a little cranky makes sense.”

The creature backs away, showing rows of pointed teeth with two sharp canines. The head, back, sides, and front of its limbs are covered in rocky plates. The belly and backsides of its limbs are dusted with gray fur. The camouflage is impressive, and I can easily see how the thing that killed its mom probably mistook it for a rock.

“Here,” I say, fishing out one of the last pieces of meat I have. “Are you hungry?” I ask, waving the meat in front of it.

Its nose twitches and it takes a step toward me, then backs away again, growling in such a high pitch it’s pretty hard to be intimidated. I toss the meat toward it, but the rock cat must think it’s an attack. It flinches back, body tucking into a tight ball of rock and taking off at high speeds in the opposite direction. But it slams straight into a tree, pauses, and then rolls around to hide behind the trunk.

“Now what will human do? Feast on the dead one?” Bugbug asks.

“No… I mean… I don’t know. It seems messed up to use its mom for meat, but it also seems fucked up to let her go to waste. Maybe I can just… come do that when he’s not around.”

“Small creature’s intellectual capacity is likely even more insignificant than human’s. Should eat the mother and leave the baby.”

“I’m not taking advice from a talking booger who rides around in a port-a-thrug,” I say, pulling more meat from my pack and ripping it into little strips. I sprinkle them as I head back to my cave, leaving a long trail that will hopefully entice the creature to follow me.

“What if creature has other parent?” Bugbug asks.

I shake my head. “There were no signs of other tracks near the den. It seemed like the dead one was the only one moving around.”

“Still possible,” Bugbug says.

“Yeah, well… I’d rather be wrong while trying to help him than assume he’ll be okay and wonder if he died on his own.”

I spend some time thinking of a name for it on my way back. The rock theme gives some pretty obvious options from the tapes. Rocky, of course, but it feels a little too on-the-nose. Pebble would fit, but that also only works when he’s tucked into his ball form, and it’s not from any tape I know of.

I still haven’t come to a conclusion by the time I’m back to the cave.

I take longer than necessary to collect the corestones and scatter snow over the place where I was building my fires. I tell myself it’s to make sure nobody can tell I was camping out here. Really, I’m just trying to give that creature some time to follow me. I can’t picture it surviving out here on its own with things like the empties, the other mutated animals, whatever huge hoofed thing ate its mom, and especially big bastards like the giant.

But realistically, I can’t sit around all day and wait for it, either. I’ve got to get back to the outpost, and if I want to make it before dark, I need to leave soon.

I’m running out of things to pretend to do around the cave when I hear a faint smacking noise, like chewing. I turn and see it creeping closer from the edge of the treeline. Tentatively, it approaches the last scrap of meat, snaps it up, and then scoots back to the trees to chew.

I kneel down, sticking out a hand. “Come here, boy. Want to be friends?”

It curls into a ball and rolls even farther away.

“Hah. Hah. Hah. Friendship is rejected by small baby,” Bugbug says. “Is this as pathetic in human culture as it is in thrug culture?”

“It’s just nervous.” On a whim, I pull out one of the corestones and set it in the snow. I back up a few steps and wait. I see the two large eyes appear in a thick, snow-covered bush. For several seconds, nothing happens. Then the little cat that’s hardly the size of my boot sprints out and pounces, tackling the ball and rolling around in the snow with it, kicking at it with its hind legs.

“Why does it do this?”

“It’s like a cat. It likes to attack stuff, I guess.”

“Stupid,” Bugbug says.

I watch it playing with the stone, trying not to think about where that stone came from. But at least it’s happy, now. And more importantly, it’s distracted.

I kneel down beside the creature and pick up the ball. To my surprise, it doesn’t detach. It just clings to it and lets me carefully set it inside my pack with the other corestone and what’s left of the meat I harvested from the elk. I stay very still at first, but all I hear are the occasional purrs as it battles both corestones, punctuated by chewing.

“Yeah, help yourself,” I say, smiling as I head back toward where the mother died. As long as it’s in my pack, I don’t need to worry about traumatizing him when I harvest whatever meat I can from the mother’s body.

My new friend stays inside the pack while I work to collect what meat I can from the mother. Unfortunately, the rocky plates are studded deep into the meat, meaning it’s a relatively quick job because there’s not much that looks like it’s edible.

I know it’s silly, but I take a few minutes to pile snow on the dead mother. I pause to say a couple words to the fresh mound of snow over her body. “I’ll take care of the cub for you. And… sorry I was planning to kill you. In my defense, I thought you started it.”

“Bugbug does not understand humans,” he says as I head in the direction of my home outpost. It has only been a few days, but damn am I excited to get back.

“Humans get connected to things. It’s just how we are,” I say. “At least how we used to be. I think some of the people from my time lost that. But I always tried to make sure I didn’t.”

“Connection is weakness to exploit.”

“Maybe. But what are the chances I could stand against Merrick if I was alone? But if I help the people in my outpost get stronger, we might have a shot. Especially when I give them these two corestones I found. We’ll be able to upgrade again and maybe get a fresh round of supplies. For all I know, they’ve found more marked people while I’ve been gone, too.”

“Or they have been smashed by giant,” Bugbug suggests.

I fall silent, choosing not to think about that possibility. I’ve been walking a few minutes when I realize the creature in my pack has stopped moving. Carefully, I peek inside and see it’s curled up, hugging one of the corestones with its eyes closed.

The lumpy shape of the rocks on his back and the way he can curl into a ball make me think I’ve got the perfect name. Smiling a little, I close the pouch and put it back over my shoulder. “I’m going to call him Meatball.”

“Name is reminder that he is food if behavior is bad?” Bugbug nods. “Wise. Bugbug likes.”